.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
"I've been using a typewriter all my life. I used to be a reporter, and I used the telephone and so on, so I feel very close to these objects. I started with the telephone, went on to the typewriter, and then the toatser has always fascinated me so I made a toaster. They are all made in vinyl. They were first made in muslin and then re-done in vinyl because I wanted to get a yielding surface. That was one of the ways I felt I could remove the object from context. I mean to individualize it, and it was always a desire to control space, to shape space in sculpture in a different way because most sculptures are hard, even when they move" (C. Oldenburg cited in Jan McDevitt, 'The Object: Still Life. Interviews with the New Object Makers', Craft Horizons, September-October 1965, p. 31.)
For Oldenburg, who once commented that "the erotic or the sexual is the root of all art", the sensual qualities inherent within such materials as vinyl and fur allowed him to transform such ordinary inanimate household machines as telephones, typewriters and light switches into enigmatic objects with a personality of their own. In the manner of his many erotic sketches of the period, the process of making soft sculptures allowed Oldenburg to infuse the ordinary and the everyday with his own personality. Somewhat reminiscent of the subvertive manipulation of material implicit within Surrealism's soft watches or fur cups, Oldenburg's soft sculptures were ultimately, for him, a means of what he has described as "finding myself in my surroundings." "What I see is not the thing itself" he has said, "but - myself - in its form." (Notebook entry Dec. 1-7 1960, cited in C. Oldenburg & E. Williams, Store Days, New York 1967, p. 65). In Soft Typewriter a classic image of a hard, sharped-edged writing machine has been transformed into a playful soft and sensual object that not only explores both the artist's and our own assumptions about such a commonplace object. such a commonplace object. such a commonplace object.
For Oldenburg, who once commented that "the erotic or the sexual is the root of all art", the sensual qualities inherent within such materials as vinyl and fur allowed him to transform such ordinary inanimate household machines as telephones, typewriters and light switches into enigmatic objects with a personality of their own. In the manner of his many erotic sketches of the period, the process of making soft sculptures allowed Oldenburg to infuse the ordinary and the everyday with his own personality. Somewhat reminiscent of the subvertive manipulation of material implicit within Surrealism's soft watches or fur cups, Oldenburg's soft sculptures were ultimately, for him, a means of what he has described as "finding myself in my surroundings." "What I see is not the thing itself" he has said, "but - myself - in its form." (Notebook entry Dec. 1-7 1960, cited in C. Oldenburg & E. Williams, Store Days, New York 1967, p. 65). In Soft Typewriter a classic image of a hard, sharped-edged writing machine has been transformed into a playful soft and sensual object that not only explores both the artist's and our own assumptions about such a commonplace object. such a commonplace object. such a commonplace object.
